Changing media summit: the wrongs of rights...

Digital rights management is a controversial topic, but the session entitled "I'll see you in court: the rights and wrongs of DRM" was rather uncontroversial. Though the speakers held broadly different views, their contributions recognised that there is no hard and fast answer. Should copyright holders prevent the unauthorised duplication of their work to ensure continued revenue streams? Or should there by a totally open house?

Ian Brown, a board member of the Open Rights group, evidently demolished the case for DRM last year. But he returned today to say once again that DRM technology cannot cope, won't ever cope and should not cope. People must be able to do as they wish with creative content. Indeed, they already are. He said that music executives (unnamed) say that DRM is reducing music sales, and that the artistes who release their work in MP3 formats, to circumvent DRM, are doing better than those who do not. "We should move to an unprotected format", he said.

Andrew Gowers, communications chief with Lehman Brothers, who led inquiry for the government into intellectual property rights, pointed out that there is a continuing problem caused by having a law which the public honour in the breach. They copy music. They copy TV programmes. It therefore makes the law seem like an ass. He believed that the digital age offers great opportunities, but conceded that there are great threats too. None of these are, however, are easy to resolve, because this is a global, rather than a national, problem.

Paul Grindey, head of business affairs at Film4 said that it was "uncomfortable" for the creators, distributors and sellers of high cost content to contemplate that their work can so easily be copied and therefore threaten the essential revenue which is a necessary reward for their work.

Elizabeth Gibson, a BBC lawyer, agreed that it can't be good for public policy for so many people to be operating against the law. But programmes paid for by licence-payers should never be made too difficult to obtain.

On the whole, it was one of those circular discussions which seems impossible to resolve satisfactorily. We want freedom. We want to see creators properly rewarded. But how can we find a balance? And is DRM the way to do it? The jury is still out.